Fatal Judgment

In The U.s., 2nd Thoughts On Troubled Death Record

In the United States, no one executed in the 20th Century has received a posthumous pardon or been otherwise declared innocent by an official act of government.

While England has established a special commission to re-investigate capital cases, historically, pardons in America have been so rare that not one has been granted to a defendant executed in the last 100 years.

In one of this century's most notorious cases, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis signed a proclamation in 1977 saying Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti had been denied a fair trial when they were convicted of murdering a paymaster and his guard during a 1920 robbery.

Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927 in a case that continues to stir debate. The two men's supporters contend that they were prosecuted and convicted based upon their anarchist beliefs rather than compelling evidence.

Although Dukakis assailed the two men's trial as one rooted in prejudice and tainted by withheld evidence, his proclamation neither declared the men innocent nor overturned their convictions. Instead, it declared that "any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed" from their names.

Even so, Dukakis's proclamation generated a furious backlash, with the Massachusetts Senate even voting to censure him.

Dukakis issued a similar proclamation in 1984 that purported to clear the names of James Halligan and Dominic Daley, two Irishmen executed in 1806. Although Dukakis noted that the uncle of a prosecution witness subsequently confessed to the crime on his deathbed, that proclamation also had limited effect. As in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, Dukakis' action did not overturn Halligan's and Daley's convictions.

In contrast, Nebraska and Pennsylvania have formally overturned the convictions of men who were executed in the 19th Century.

In 1986, the Nebraska Board of Pardons, a three-member panel that includes the state's governor, attorney general and secretary of state, granted a posthumous pardon to William Jackson Marion. Convicted of killing a man named John Cameron, Marion was hanged in 1887. The board issued the pardon after hearing arguments that a coroner had misidentified a skeleton as Cameron's, and that Cameron was seen alive four years after Marion's execution.

In 1979, Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp granted a posthumous pardon to Jack Kehoe, who was executed in 1878. Kehoe, the reputed leader of a group of Irish coal miners called the Molly Maguires, had been convicted of murdering a mine foreman after a trial that the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons said was conducted "in an atmosphere of religious, social and ethnic tension."

Illinois has, in spirit at least, likewise acknowledged the innocence of men once hanged in the state's name.

In 1886, seven policemen were killed when a bomb was thrown during a deadly labor riot in Chicago's Haymarket Square. Although the bomb's thrower was never established, eight alleged anarchists were convicted.

In 1887, four of the men were hanged. A fifth committed suicide before he could be executed. Of the three remaining defendants, one had been sentenced to 15 years, while the other two received death sentences that were commuted to life.

In 1893, Illinois Gov. John Peter Altgeld pardoned the three surviving Haymarket defendants--not as an act of mercy, but because he believed all eight were innocent. Altgeld's decision created a firestorm of controversy and spelled the end of his political career.

Other defendants have come perilously close to death before being released.

In 1932, Edwin Borchard, a Yale University law professor, published "Convicting the Innocent," which provided case studies of 65 instances of wrongful conviction, most of them in America from the early part of the century. His collection included several cases in which men skirted execution only to be exonerated.

In 1901, for example, convicted murderer J.B. Brown was led to the gallows in Florida and had the noose around his neck. He would have hanged but for a clerical error: The death warrant mistakenly listed his jury's foreman as the man to be executed. His sentence was commuted to life, and 12 years later, he was exonerated after the real killer confessed.

Will Purvis of Mississippi came closer yet to being executed for a crime he didn't commit. In 1894, the noose was around his neck and the trapdoor opened. Purvis fell, but the knot untied, allowing him to hit the ground unhurt. Horror gripped the crowd, with some members ascribing the event to divine intervention. After much back and forth, Purvis was spared a second hanging. Four years later, the prosecution's star witness recanted, and Purvis was pardoned. Years after that, another man confessed to the killing.

Near misses continue to this day.

In Florida, Joseph Green Brown came within 15 hours of being electrocuted and said he even heard the buzz from the electric chair as guards tested it in preparation for his execution. He was exonerated and released in 1987.

In Illinois, where 13 people on Death Row have been exonerated, Anthony Porter came within two days of execution, winning a reprieve only because of concerns about his low IQ, not because of his possible innocence.

Afterward, a private investigator working with Northwestern University journalism students obtained a videotaped confession from the real killer, and Porter was freed.